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tv   Breaking the Set  RT  August 20, 2013 7:29am-8:01am EDT

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the radio guy and the minister of a click. away what we're about to give you've never seen anything like this i'm telling. you. how long the folks i'm having are in the breaking the set so president obama arrived in israel today what is now the most well documented trip the president has ever made along with a new mobile app that will let you track obama during his visit to the israeli government has helped the local contest that finally trademarks they make relationships between the two countries this is the official logo of baraki and v.b. twenty thirteen as part of this big publicity stunt a bizarre video recently surfaced on the internet check out. something. we
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welcome president obama to through express our appreciation for what he has done for the fon between the united states and israel are unbreakable and the commitment of the united states to the security of israel is going to. believe it or not because this isn't a parody this was actually uploaded by the israeli embassy in washington you know their marketing campaign is so good that it almost makes me forget about all that warmongering about iran and the apartheid being practiced against palestinians almost but not quite so well the corporate media continues to fixate on obama's holy land voyage i'll break in the side of. the to where it is good for you never seen anything like that.
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i'm really excited right now to introduce one of the few politicians that i actually admire talking about congressman dennis to finish one of the most honest credible politicians who ever served a man who spent his tenure fighting for the issues that americans care the most about from the war in iraq to the food we eat is always stood on the right side the side of truth which is why i'm honored to have the chance to speak to congressman who said himself i first asked him about oil being a motivating factor for the iraq war particularly in light of bush's former speechwriter coming out to validate that claim and here's what he had to say. the very beginning it was very clear that there was no legitimate reason to go into iraq the only compelling reason would be to try to help corner the market on oil it didn't work out that way for those who thought that it would but the fact of the
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matter is oil was so. well known to be a motivating factor that when i ran for president two thousand and four going cross the country i'd ask audiences tell me what this is about this war is about in three letters and thousands of people would respond simultaneously oil ever it was not it was never a secret. in two thousand and seven congressman you actually introduced articles of impeachment against george bush and dick cheney when you look at things like nixon being ousted for wiretapping clinton being ousted for an affair how is it that these two men could not be held accountable for initiating an illegal war based on known lies well i think we have to place. the responsibility for that on the shoulders of democratic leadership. because we could have moved forward with impeachment but the democratic.
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today that war was based on lies so then should not since the catastrophe of the war resulted in thousands of americans being killed tens of thousands injured maybe a million innocent iraqis died perhaps damage in the hundreds of billions of dollars to iraq should there be some kind of bill and so what i've called for is a process of truth and reconciliation like south africa had many years ago where leaders are required to come forward and state their role in the decision making process and if they lie then they're subject to perjury charges we need to clear the air in america we need the truth and it's every since everyone knows it was based on a lie and what's wrong with calling those who lied to us forward to not only require explanation but to clear the air absolutely i remember pelosi the times and impeachment was off the table i mean could it be that the democratic leadership was scared that they would open their can of worms and somehow be complicit in the lie as well you know one third of the two thirds of the democrats voted against going
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to war but the third that did vote ford were involved as were their counterparts in the senate establishment types politics that favored war and some of the leading senators who have become you know exalted public figures took a stand for that war and they've never been held accountable and even politically interestingly enough it would seem as though to be qualified to speak on foreign policy even still today that you have to have been for the war even though it was based on lies that's the kind of upside down thinking that continues to guide foreign policy decisions in washington d.c. well speaking of upside down policy obama's reason for not prosecuting or even investigating the bush officials was because he wanted to look forward not backward however i can't help but wonder why he continues to look backward to prosecute those who looks posed of war crimes as whistleblowers and stead of the war criminals no good deed remains on punished and those who are the
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whistleblowers are being. punished those who took us into war based on lies are being celebrated this inversion of reality is orwellian needs to be. reckoned with and that's why i call for the spirit of truth and reconciliation and you know what this is all law enforcement about looking backwards actually hello. can agree with my let's talk about that gas and war and in terms of looking backwards it was sold to us as a war of necessity in a post nine eleven world of course bush at the time at a ninety five percent approval rating i don't blame people for voting for it thinking that we needed some form of retaliation but did you find the logic flawed now looking back do you regret your vote to invade and occupy a country to find one man we did not congress did not vote to invade and occupy they voted to give the president the ability to respond to the attack on nine eleven and frankly i think it was appropriate that the united states struck at the
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training camps and made the point that you are not going to attack the united states with impunity stop there and of story not invade and occupy and basically try to break the country. hasn't been successfully conquered in modern times so this two points to the serious flaws in our foreign policy we have an obligation to defend this country and i don't take a backseat to anyone in saying that if america's attacked we have a right to defend ourselves but it was absolutely. it was criminal to go and think that we're going to knock off the afghanistan occupied control that remake a country where a lot of it's just a box of rocks and what do we think who we think we are this is a major flaw it's two birds arrogance and we need to we need some explanation to the american people absolutely let's talk about your presidential run in two
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thousand and eight both you and ron paul were. much of the leading antiwar figures of course on both sides of the spectrum of both parties i remember leftists and libertarians at the time calling for you guys to be running mates because you were so united against the wars and for the restoration of our civil liberties now these factions are so divided they're more divided than ever before and it just seems like without any representation to have us these dividing factions fighting each other instead of the forces that we should be fighting against is really counterintuitive how do you think it got to be this way and how can we unite these factions to really focus on a cohesive unified opposition again i think that what ron paul and i approved is. plenty of space in american politics for a new movement which goes across partisan lines which embraces the concerns of democrats and republicans liberals and conservatives that's based on the truth and protecting the constitution and taking care of our practical aspirations share at
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home and sharply curtailing this aggression that america has practiced around the world so i think you know ron paul and i have been able to demonstrate this capacity of creating new possibilities and frankly since the two parties continue to fail to address america's economic problems i think that the american people increasingly will be looking towards alternatives as we move towards a future i call it the two party dictatorship congressman let's talk about civil liberties which is something that you have been very vocal about in your entire term grandpa sorry epic epic filibuster not really supported by a single democrat i mean how is it that drones and due process are a partisan issue now well they shouldn't be and what happens in washington is this whatever party holds the white house their supporters in congress try to protect the president of their party but the president isn't just
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a president of parties president of united states. i members of congress are just partisan participants in a process they are united states congress persons and what we have to remember is that both myself and ron paul rand's father raised this issue of the drones in the congress relentlessly brought a resolution in front of the congress forced committee a committee to have to consider it and you know this is finally people are starting to understand there are constitutional issues here and good for senator rand paul for raising the issue on the floor of the senate but we haven't resolved that we should you know this other countries are going to start to use drones imagine for a moment of china thought that it any other nation thought that they could invade u.s. airspace with a drone as we invade other people's airspace we would stand for it how can we expect other countries to continue to stand by while we violate their sovereignty and territorial integrity and then on a domestic level we've got to worry about the domestic use of drones won't be long mark my words that law enforcement domestically will start using these drones to go
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after suspects using armed force and they're counterintuitive abroad i mean it doesn't take a genius to see that killing people is drones is not a good way to fight quote terrorism and you served an epic eighteen year run and congress you were one of the most vocal leaders against the establishment line time and time again when you were redistricted did you feel that you were deliberately gerrymandered out of office because of your politics by the democrats. not by the republicans it was democrats you know a legislature who went out of their way to totally distort the map in ohio and to cut my district up into four pieces making it impossible for me to win and now i can tell you i don't need just a fact i'm not bitter about it i you know i still have a home in washington a home in cleveland i can occasionally see the light of the capitol on i just want to know who's home. unbelievable when your own party turns against the idea. what
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this country was founded on when you did leave congress and the media portrayed you as friends i mean they even called you the congressman with the most wacky ideas yet the majority of americans support what you stood up for how is it that this depiction is even allowed to exist and what damage does it do when people feel like they're marginalized for sharing views that you had one of those who would never change my position and you know when you when you stand for the truth it's very easy to understand that you take on certain interest groups we're going to try to marginalize you it is interesting as you point out that someone would try to characterize as fringe having opposed to war in iraq based on facts having challenges those who made the decision to cost our troops and our nation and the iraqi people so dearly having challenge other wars proven to be right again and again and again but you know what that means if the truth is that the french then
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what position is being celebrated. exactly exactly and you know you're speaking from an inside perspective you've been inside the system first so long when you look at things like monsanto like vermont not even able to pass the labeling law because of the fear of lawsuits monsanto i mean you also were one of the only people to try to get g m o's labeled. what is i mean what does this say it do corporations the centrally have more power then then voter resolutions and how yes yes after buckley versus the lawyer on citizens united corporations took enormous power over our government to look they were able to get the bush administration and its waning days to be able to claim the first bush administration to be able to claim in one thousand nine hundred three that genetically modified organisms are the functional equivalent of conventional food no science based on at all but the dollar bill as a science all of its own and so now you have hundreds of millions of acres of crops
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have been planted with. genetically modified organisms are used to do that and we can't our markets are closing in europe as a result people don't want to commit and even more than that we have no idea as to the effects with respect to respect allergenicity toxicity functional characteristics antibiotic resistance were part of a grand experiment now in our food and you know this is another one of the reasons why. indeed we are and thank you for bringing those fringe ideas up to the mainstream and standing up for the truth that so many of us don't have a voice to share in the system thank you so much congressman. if you like what you see so far check us out on hulu dot com in the set and there you can watch the latest episode of the show like yesterday's which featured the iraq war ten years on media lies refugees in an ongoing civil war and also scroll through and watch every show since about the middle of the summer so no favorite comment on how we're doing it. at all right now let's take
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a break from my preaching that state to hear more about the war and fear mongering next. good luck. was to build its most sophisticated. certainly doesn't sound anything to mission to teach. this is why you should. only. if you leave with the economic ups and downs in the final months day belong to the deal sang i and the rest of the life during the case it will be every week ok.
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well all over my language a whole but i will only react to situations i have read the reports from little or no i will leave them to the state department to comment on your latter point to say it is secure yet a car is only a dog. no god. no more weasel words when you have a direct question be prepared for a change when you throw a punch be ready for a. pretty upscale age and little down the freedom to cost.
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cuts. if. right now i'd like to explore another aspect of the iraq war in light of the tenth anniversary of the plight of war veterans and a veteran suicides has now a number of the deaths in combat with one happening at a rate every sixty five minutes needless to say the suffering of u.s. soldiers goes far beyond the battlefield which is why i want to highlight iraq war veteran thomas young in a scathing letter addressed to bush and cheney young leaves for their day of reckoning as he lies on his deathbed he writes quote before my own death i want to make it clear that i and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans along with hundreds of millions more know fully who you are and what you have done you may
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have justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of a group just war crimes of plunder and finally of murder including the murder of thousands of young americans my fellow veterans whose future use toll indeed his plight is shared by countless other veterans who suffer permanent disability mental illness or financial ruin from these wars so here to discuss the ongoing challenges facing veterans today i'm joined by michael prysner iraq war veteran and co-founder of the march forward thanks so much for coming on thanks for having me i'd be so i want to first ask you about this alarming rate of suicides the prevalence of mental health issues that are continuing to plague vets why do you think that we're seeing an exponential growth in these statistics. well you know first of all i think that letter makes a very great point that those who knowingly lied to bring us to the iraq war and cause so much suffering for the iraqi people and for so many u.s. service members these people are not in jail or in danger of being punished these
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people are on book tours and making millions of dollars off of talking about their role in the iraq war and so of course there is a great injustice there and you mentioned that the suicide numbers are staggering i mean one active duty. service member per day takes their own life and hundreds more attempts suicide every single month and that's not even counting veterans who get out of the military who commit suicide at a rate now of twenty two per day veterans of all generations and the reason is not a mystery in fact a pentagon survey survey that was conducted recently which surveyed active duty service members who had attempted suicide and failed the number one response that they got from those those service members was that they could not handle a situation they were in and they could not see any other way out now how many jobs can you think of where people in that job are killing themselves in mass because
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they see no other way out of that situation the culture in the military is humiliation and ridicule from the superior officers from the chain of command towards people who seek help for post-traumatic stress disorder people who seek mental health services and fact we had a general general pittard who's a commanding general of a base with a high number of suicides publicly writing that soldiers are selfish for being suicidal and most of them are lying and the lingering but even if you're lucky enough to be able to get treatment the treatment is grossly inadequate and many service members will tell you that the so-called treatment they were receiving from mental health on base or from the v.a. made their situation actually much worse wow that's really sad commentary that the generals that's selfish to take life i guess when you can't live with things that you've done or seen you have such as a service is one limited enough for returning vets and my last year there was a cut to the g.i. bill and this year the sequester is cutting even more with tuition assistance i
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mean can you go over what these cuts will do and how detrimental they really are. sure well the tuition assistance was a very significant thing because as we know most people who join the u.s. military today come from very poor working class backgrounds people who dream of an education but have no access to an education people who want access to benefits like health care and housing and job training and so there's a lot of you recruiters exploit this economic draw to get young people into the military straight from high school tuition assistance was this program that is a major point for recruiters getting people into the military saying while you're on while you're in military service you can go to college for free take as many classes as you want work on your degree will pay for all of it so you can get out with even more skills than when you went in but cutting the twist as it is saying that now that is removed and so all those thousands and thousands of soldiers who joined specifically because of the educational benefits are now told that well they don't matter because we need that money for something else and that something else
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that they needed money for one of them was the fact that congress gave itself a raise at the same time they were cutting tuition assistance at the same time they were gutting the g.i. bill which is a main source of income for many iraq and afghanistan veterans so we have a situation where we have these rich politicians were very rich and in fact a recent study found that you have to have at least ten million dollars to become a senator which is quite a bit of money these rich politicians who sent us to war for their rich friends on wall street all while saying that we support the troops and patting us on the back when they're sending us to war when we get back not only are we getting scraps from the table but even our scraps are being taken away there are billions of dollars for the defense industry and for the lavish lifestyles of these politicians you know when it comes to actually caring for service members when they return we're told that there is just not enough money and those things need to be got in this shows that these are wars for the rich a foreign policy for the rich and people who are in the rank and file military have
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no reason to take part in. and i want to go back to that letter we have about a minute left blames bush and cheney for stealing the future of millions of people and the need to hold someone accountable as someone who was in iraq for year what does that accountable accountability mean to you mike. it means jail for all of the people who lied to take us to war i mean george w. bush dick cheney donald rumsfeld colin powell everyone in the bush administration all of the media c.e.o.'s who propagated all of the lies all of the military commanders who lied and sent us to war knowing that their reasons were fabricated they need to be held responsible not just for the deaths of thousands of u.s. soldiers in the catastrophe created for us soldiers but the complete catastrophe for millions of iraqis over a million who have died become refugees wounded and of course we can't talk about p.t.s.d. for u.s. soldiers without acknowledging that p.t.s.d. for an entire generation of iraqis is a real reality millions and millions of people whose lives have been destroyed and
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so people want justice for all of these war criminals and people are fighting to win justice and an organization we are forward is working to help get this justice and also help that's opt out thank you so much mike prize the iraq war veteran and co-founder of march forward. so guys as you know this week marks the tenth anniversary of the u.s. invasion of iraq but sadly you wouldn't know if you're just watching the corporate media because instead of apologizing for their complicity in helping to sell the iraq war they're too busy beating the war drums for the next two just check out this screen shot from my show just last night as i was covering colin powells allies the u.n. ten years ago c.n.n. was speculating about chemical weapons in syria and at the same time fox news fear
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mongering about iran's new nonexistent nuclear weapons program man that cartoon bomb is never gets old does it but in case you've been tuned out let me fill you in take a look. to syria now where the assad regime. and rebel forces are both accusing one another of using chemical weapons syrian state media claimed yesterday that opposition forces as rebel forces launched a chemical attack and aleppo province killing at least two dozen people injuring more than one hundred people other violence to talk about syria's government and opposition are trading accusations tonight about the use of chemical weapons president obama has characterized such activity as a crossing a red line that theoretically would lead to harsh consequences. but of course the latest hot topic is an all too familiar one chemical weapons you know it's fascinating the media seems to do nothing but speculate about their existence or
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whether or not the assad regime has even used them but despite all this uncertainty the chemical weapons hysteria has been leading the corporate news coverage but syria's possible weapon of mass destruction is not the only source of national security fear induced by the corporate press of course we can't forget about the big other scary beast in the middle east see for yourself. russia has issued a blunt new warning tonight to iran about nuclear weapons and a.b.c.'s chief global affairs correspondent martha raddatz is in the middle east to tell us what happened tonight and what it means on a role in international sanctions aren't connecting the iranian people but not impacting the nuclear program to sanctions or having an impact on the least to this point the sanctions those four have not induced a change in routine government policy there may be some disagreements on how far along but on the fundamental question do the israelis trust the president obama would if necessary use the military option he says they're shoulder to shoulder you
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know it's astonishing that on the tenth anniversary of a preemptive invasion of a sovereign nation based on known lies we're seeing the exact same thing happen all over again beating the same war tune the same war drums using the exact same. ganda and the rare instances of the media admitting their complicity in bolstering the bush administration's unfounded claims about iraq they simply say we were all duped the american people and us and we're sorry perhaps the biggest weapon of mass distraction of all is that we weren't all do it just think back to the millions of people in this country and around the world that mobilized the biggest antiwar opposition since vietnam prior to the iraq invasion but they didn't listen the truth of the matter is that the media wasn't hoodwinked at all it had a set agenda to fill the agenda of war in a society that runs on perpetual warfare the corporate media functions as nothing
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more than an apparatus in which the wars can be sold not to let them get away with it can because they can't keep selling it and we're not buying it. wealthy british style done. on time right on. the. market why not. find out what's really happening to the global economy
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with mike stronger no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune in to conjure reports on our. mission. critical free storage. and free. three. types of free. download free blog plug in video for your media projects free media. dot com in. play. it. and.
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play. play. play play. clip. and. if you. believe.
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the british government goes allowed to block revelations on mass surveillance as the paper of the first published the snowden leaks says it has been forced to destroy its trove of data. and a scandals continue to unfold around the u.s. national security agency and surveillance practices we'll look at how once a low key organization responsible for code making and code breaking has become so powerful. turkey's prime minister claims he has evidence that israel was behind the coup in egypt where the resulting chaos has claimed almost a thousand lives and crippled vital industries. and a human tide of disparate tens of thousands of kurdish refugees fleeing across the iraqi border as.

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